Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a control method for the image forming apparatus, a storage medium, and an image forming system.
Description of the Related Art
When print data comprised of a plurality of sections is to be printed on recording sheets, a user may set different numbers of print copies for respective ones of the plurality sections constituting the print data. In this case, an image forming apparatus prints the sections of the print data on recording sheets based on the numbers of print copies set by the user.
There are known image forming apparatuses which have a test printing function of, when printing multiple copies of print data comprised of one section, printing only one copy of print data on recording sheets first (see, for example, Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-341361). When a user has obtained a desired printing result by test printing, the image forming apparatus described in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-341361 prints the same number of copies of print data as a number obtained by subtracting one from the number of print copies originally intended.
However, when a user orders test printing for print data which is comprised of a plurality of sections and for which different numbers of print copies are set for the respective sections, the user may be confused.
Assume, for example, that the number of print copies for the first section is set to 1, and the number of print copies for the second section is set to 10. Conventionally, for print data comprised of one section, an instruction to perform test printing is not accepted because it is useless to perform test printing when the number of print copies is set to 1.
For print data comprised of a plurality of sections mentioned above, the number of print copies set for the second section is plural, and hence it is useful to perform test printing for the second section, but it is useless to perform test printing for the first sections. If test printing is performed only for the second section, a user may be perplexed by test printing being not performed for the first section.
Further, when results of test printing can be seen only after both printed matter of the first section and printed matter of the second section are available, it is useless to perform test printing only for the second section. Moreover, if test printing is performed for the first section, the first section is not printed at the time of normal printing after test printing, and hence a user may be perplexed by this after all.